The national law firm of Quarles & Brady LLP has announced that the firm’s Franchise & Distribution Team has launched Franchise Law Insider, a blog that provides news and legal developments in franchise law. This blog will keep franchisors and franchisees aware of current news and events in this area.

“Our clients look to us regarding representation and litigation involving their franchise operations,” said Daniel M. Janssen, chair of the Franchise & Distribution Team. “Our Quarles & Brady attorneys provide counsel regarding transactional and regulatory matters, to franchisors of all sizes and in all industries. This blog will serve as another way by which we can help businesses flourish.”

Andy Beilfuss, partner and regular contributor to the blog said, “Franchise Law Insider will discuss trending industry news and topics that will be helpful to franchisors and franchisees. We are very excited about this opportunity to keep our clients abreast of contemporary business issues in the field.”

The franchise team is engaged in domestic and international franchising and distribution matters. This blog, housed on LexBlog, will allow clients to get a quick snapshot of what they need to know and what questions they should ask their legal counsel. To subscribe to the blog and get the latest information, visit http://franchiselawinsider.quarles.com/.

About Quarles & Brady LLP

Quarles & Brady is a full-service law firm with more than 475 attorneys offering an array of legal services to corporate and individual clients that range from small entrepreneurial businesses to Fortune 100 companies, with practice focuses in health care and life sciences, business law, data privacy and security, and complex litigation. The firm has offices in Chicago; Indianapolis; Madison; Milwaukee; Naples, Florida; Phoenix; Scottsdale; Tampa; Tucson; and Washington, D.C. Additional information can be found online at quarles.com, as well as on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

The new Republican majority in the Senate is turning up the pressure on the National Labor Relations Board, with a series of hearings and legislative attacks against policies that make it easier for workers to unionize, reports The Hill.

The hearings will put a spotlight on an agency increasingly held in disdain by Republicans, while also offering a platform for the GOP to cozy up to the business groups that have assailed the labor board as blatantly pro-union. Atop the GOP’s agenda is an effort to beat back regulations that would speed up the process by which employees vote to form a union, according to the report in The Hill.

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Draft rules from the U.S. Department of Labor clarify how the government will investigate pay disparities between men and women, according to a report in the Hartford Courant.

“It just puts contractors on notice there’s going to be a broad review of their compensation practices,” said Dean Singewald II, an associate at the Stamford office of Epstein Becker Green, who defends government contractors around the country in Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs reviews.

That department, in the U.S. Department of Labor, is the one that published the notice of new rules Jan. 28. Contractors or other members of the public will have a chance to critique the new rules through March 31, the Courant reports.

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News Corp announced that David Pitofsky has been named General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer.

Pitofsky succeeds Gerson Zweifach. Zweifach, who remains Group General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer of 21st Century Fox, was retained as the General Counsel of News Corp on a transitional basis following the separation of the two companies in June 2013.

Pitofsky has been Deputy General Counsel and Deputy Chief Compliance Officer of News Corp since 2013.

“I am grateful to Gerson for his steadfast leadership during the separation of our two companies and this time of transition for the new News Corp,” said Rupert Murdoch, Executive Chairman of News Corp. “Gerson has been a consistent source of wise counsel and strategic thinking, and he will be missed, though I am glad he will continue to lead the legal team at 21st Century Fox.”

Murdoch continued, “Over the past two years I have worked with David, he has proven himself to be a first-rate lawyer whose insights and advice have been invaluable. We feel very fortunate to have him as our new General Counsel, where I am sure he will provide great leadership and support to our businesses around the world.”

“David’s the ideal person to slip into Gerson’s large legal shoes, ensuring a seamless transition in a major leadership position here at News Corp,” said Robert Thomson, Chief Executive of News Corp. “His impeccable integrity, legal insight and collaborative spirit will serve us all well in the years ahead.”

“All of us at News Corp appreciate Gerson’s very effective service as our General Counsel during this crucial start-up period,” said Thomson. “We knew from the outset that this day was inevitable, but Gerson’s efficacious impact will echo for many years to come.”

“I’m honored to succeed Gerson, from whom I’ve learned so much, and thrilled to have the chance to work even more closely with Robert and everyone at News Corp,” said Pitofsky. “As a new company with growing global and increasingly digital businesses, News Corp has many exciting challenges and opportunities, which I look forward to tackling with my colleagues.”

“I can’t think of a better person to take on this task than David, whose judgment and legal acumen I trust without reservation,” said Zweifach. “I’ll miss the frequent dealings with Robert and so many others at News Corp with whom I’ve worked on many issues, but I deeply appreciate the unique opportunity I’ve had.”

As General Counsel, Pitofsky will oversee global legal operations for News Corp, including litigation, mergers and acquisitions, ethics and corporate governance matters. As Chief Compliance Officer, he will chair the Company’s Compliance Steering Committee. He will lead a legal team that includes deputy general counsels Michael Bunder, Eugenie Gavenchak, Mark Jackson and James Marcovitz. Bunder also serves as News Corp Corporate Secretary and Jackson also serves as General Counsel of the Company’s Dow Jones subsidiary.

Pitofsky joined News Corp from the law firm of Goodwin Procter LLP, where he was a partner. From 1996 to 2005, he was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York, rising to the level of Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Georgetown University Law Center, where he was an Executive Editor of the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics.

A group of franchise business operators launched a coalition to lobby Congress in an ongoing battle to prevent franchisors from being considered “joint employers” with franchisees, reports Nation’s Restaurant News.

The Coalition to Save Local Businesses was created with support from the International Franchise Association, or IFA, which has been at the forefront of attempts to prevent a shift in the joint-employer definition by the National Labor Relations Board.

The report says that coalition leaders, as a first step, plan to educate lawmakers on how a shift of the joint-employer definition would impact franchise business owners.

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Waits for work-based permanent residence could become easier — if not any shorter — under recent Obama administration changes overshadowed by more controversial steps for immigrants without legal status, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

But employers in Minnesota and elsewhere say the changes don’t do enough to meet their demand for more work visas and green cards for college-educated professionals.

“Talent shortages, particularly in the high-tech industry, have been the focus of intense debate and dueling research findings for years,” the Star Tribune says. “Administration critics have pounced on Obama’s changes to accuse him of kowtowing to business interests.”

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A Delaware jury on Feb. 6 ordered Symantec to pay $17 million to Intellectual Ventures, the Washington-based “invention marketplace” created by ex-Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold, which boasts more than 30,000 patent assets, according to a report by Ars Technica.

In its verdict [PDF], the jury found that Symantec had infringed two US patents, numbered 5,987,610 and 6,073,142. A third patent, 6,460,050, was found to be not infringed.

Ars Technica says the complaint [PDF], filed in 2010, accuses Symantec’s Brightmail Gateway and Web Gateway of infringing the ‘142 patent. That patent was filed in 1997 by Utah’s Park City Group and essentially describes a system for distributing e-mail according to a set of predetermined “business rules.”

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FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s statement was last week supporting net neutrality was improbable, reports The Daily Beast, and it was a political miracle.

The chairman’s proposal, which will be voted on by the full five-member commission on Feb. 26, bans broadband companies from discriminating between different content providers based on who can pay. The rule could protect the Internet from a world in which there are slow lanes for poor content providers and fast lanes for rich ones.

Wheeler’s statement represents a reversal from his earlier stance. He was forced to reverse his course because of an explosion of the type of decentralized political power that even the most powerful Washington lobbies cannot beat, according to the report.

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General Motors top lawyer has deferred his retirement to July because the company has not yet found his successor, according to a filing last week with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission, reports The Detroit Free Press.

Mike Millikin, the automaker’s general counsel who came under fire during last year’s Congressional hearings on GM’s recall of defective ignition switches, planned to retire early this year. But the company said in its announcement last October that the 66-year-old would remain until a replacement was found.

Millikin joined GM in 1977 and served as its top lawyer for the last five years, The Free Press reports.

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The United Steelworkers union said Feb. 7 the strike by U.S. refinery workers is expanding to two more plants early on Sunday due to unfair labor practices by oil companies, reports Reuters.

Walk-outs at BP Plc’s Whiting, Indiana, refinery and the company’s joint-venture refinery with Husky Energy in Toledo, Ohio, shortly after 12 a.m. local time on Sunday would bring the number of plants with striking hourly workers to 11, including nine refineries accounting for 13 percent of U.S. refining capacity.

BP said on Friday it had received notice of the walk-outs at the two refineries, but the Steelworkers had said little about them until Saturday, the Reuters report added.

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Environment & Energy Publishing tells the story of a Texas-based law firm has spent the past year rounding up potential clients in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania for mass litigation against Chesapeake for shorting royalty owners on payments.

The Oklahoma City-based natural gas producer has generally maintained that its royalty calculations are perfectly legal and that royalty owners have just misunderstood how their contracts work, E&E Publishing says. Nevertheless, royalty owners have sued the company in every state it has operations, resulting in a mixed bag of wins, losses and settlements.

“The royalty owners and their attorneys are adamant that Chesapeake is shortchanging them. In a recent Pennsylvania lawsuit, attorneys even accuse the company of racketeering — raising much-needed cash by selling assets to Access Midstream Partners LP and agreeing to pay the company high prices to move natural gas, then passing those costs to the royalty owners,” E&E Publishing reports.

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Bloomberg BNA’s Pension and Benefits blog reports that employers might begin drawing back on using wellness programs if they don’t get clarifying regulations on the treatment of financial incentives under the Americans with Disabilities Act from the EEOC, witnesses said at a Senate committee hearing.

Both Republican and Democrats spoke in favor of wellness programs at the Jan. 29 hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, but said that recent actions by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against employers that use financial incentives in their programs may hinder their further growth, because employers that comply with the Affordable Care Act’s provisions on these incentives could find themselves out of compliance with the ADA, the blog reports.

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As human resources has matured into a strategic business function, technology has become its backbone, according to a report at HumanResourcesOnline.net. This is particularly true within recruitment, where technology captures data about the complete lifecycle of talent – from the interview stages, to hiring and induction, and for performance management and exits.

Because many companies set aside large budgets and build entire teams around finessing their digital footprint, the business’s online presence cannot be undermined. How you are perceived online can determine the kind of talent you attract and acquire.

As the talent landscape becomes increasingly competitive, organizations need to strengthen their focus in these areas to ensure they’re top of mind of the best candidates, the site reports.

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A secret recording captures a rare inside look at two embattled executives grappling with the weight of a federal investigation into alleged bribery, according to a report at Nasdaq.com.

“In recent years, the U.S. Department of Justice has ramped up enforcement against companies that bribe overseas officials, but has settled most cases with companies out of court, leaving the human element of corporate corruption cases hidden from view. The video reveals some of the ambiguities executives can face when doing business in countries where corruption is rife,” the report says. “When is a payment to a well-connected consultant really a bribe? Who is to blame for a shared decision to make a payment when no one person understands the entire nature of the transaction?”

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Microsoft’s general counsel says he wants 2015 to be a “year for solutions” when it comes to the intersection of the internet and international law, according to a report at GeekWire.com.

Brad Smith told an audience at a an event organized by the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels, Belgium that the regulations governing how internet companies handle user privacy and government requests for data are woefully outdated and ready for a refresh.

Smith said that governments need to set up a new framework for handling security and data requests, GeekWire reports. In particular, he called for greater transparency, and protection of “fundamental freedoms,” including freedom of speech and a right to privacy.

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The United Steelworkers Union called for its refinery workers to stage their largest walkout in more 30 years Sunday, saying its negotiations with Shell Oil Co. broke down less than two weeks after they began, the Associated Press reports.

The union asked about 3,800 workers at nine refineries mostly in Texas and California to strike shortly after their previous contract expired after midnight.

The AP reports that the call for a strike happened after United Steelworkers, or USW, rejected Shell’s fourth contract offer. The union said Shell refused to provide a counter offer and that the company’s representatives had left the bargaining table.

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JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay $99.5 million to settle its portion of an antitrust lawsuit in which investors accuse 12 major banks of rigging prices in the $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market, reports Reuters.

The settlement is the first in the nationwide litigation and resolved claims over JPMorgan’s role in alleged collusion among banks since January 2003 to manipulate the WM/Reuters Closing Spot Rates, known as the Fix.

Investors including hedge funds, pension funds and the city of Philadelphia accused the 12 banks, which controlled 84 percent of the global currency trading market, of having impeded competition by conspiring to manipulate the Fix in chat rooms, instant messages and emails.

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Portland, Oregon-based Daimler Trucks North America reached a $2.4 million settlement with six former employees who last year filed civil rights complaints alleging violent threats and racism in the workplace, reports The Oregonian.

An investigation included interviews with more than 60 current and former Daimler employees and supervisors and review of hundreds of documents pertaining to the Portland truck manufacturing plant’s operations.

Daimler agreed to compensate employees for damages and comply with measures to ensure workers are free of harassment and discrimination in the workplace, according to The Oregonian‘s report. Among the measures, the company will install a civil rights complaint hotline for workers and train at least two managers to conduct internal investigations addressing any future incidents.

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The former general counsel of a bankrupted South Florida law firm that was at the center of a massive fraud was sentenced Jan. 30 to 18 months in federal prison for his role in helping managing partner Scott Rothstein swindle investors by selling them “income” from faked settlements, reports the ABA Journal.

David Boden, 53, has cooperated with the government from the start and is expected to testify against other defendants charged in connection with the schemes for which the former Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler chief is now serving 50 years. Prosecutors said Boden verified that the claimed settlements sold by Rothstein, which involved fictitious individuals and entities, were legitimate.

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A recent poll by the Association of Corporate Counsel found that more than half of in-house lawyers said work-life balance was a large factor in their decision to choose an in-house position.

The ACC polled more than 30,000 lawyers to gain insight into how organizations and leaders can benefit from the positive business outcomes of encouraging and fostering a climate of work-life balance for corporate lawyers.

The poll showed:

• Globally, Canada and the United States rate their happiness with work-life balance more positively than those from Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Asia Pacific and Latin America.
• One in five in-house lawyers who are caregivers have had to leave a job for one that better supports their caregiving role, and 4 percent quit work entirely. One in five will consider making a change in role or position in the coming year.
• Seventy percent of women caregivers say their caregiving role has had a negative impact on their opportunities for career advancement.

See the report.